Is music finally reckoning with #MeToo?

New York (AFP) – The music industry has long evaded a #MeToo reckoning like that experienced in Hollywood or the media, but the blockbuster charges against hip hop magnate Sean Combs could finally prove an inflection point.

Federal prosecutors say the artist known by various monikers including "Diddy" ran a criminal sex ring that preyed on women and blackmailed them into silence -- accusations that have activists and industry watchers hoping music's moment of accountability has arrived.

Their hope has been bolstered by a massive class action suit that followed Combs's federal charges, as well as a new lawsuit against country star Garth Brooks.

When an explosive series of accusations against R&B hitmaker R. Kelly went public five years ago, outlets including AFP asked if that was the beginning of a sea change in music.

Kelly was convicted and sentenced to more than 30 years of prison for child sex crimes, sex trafficking and racketeering.

It was indeed a milestone for the #MeToo movement as the first major sex abuse trial where the majority of accusers were Black women.

Singer R. Kelly, pictured during a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago, Illinois in 2019, was convicted of leading a decades-long sex crime ring on September 27, 2021 © Antonio PEREZ / POOL/AFP/File

But wider cultural shifts in the industry long-cliched as a bastion of sex, drugs and rock and roll didn't seem to crystallize.

The shock rocker Marilyn Manson, the music mogul Russell Simmons, the DJ Diplo, the producer Dr. Luke -- over the years women have made serious accusations against these and many other powerful men in the industry. Few repercussions have followed.

"There's this whole pass we give rock stars because of the rock star trope," said Caroline Heldman, an Occidental College professor and co-founder of the Sound Off Coalition, which is focused on sexual violence in the music industry.

"A lot of survivors that I've spoken with from the music industry, they've internalized the rock star idea -- that they should have expected" bad behavior, "because he was a rock star," she told AFP.

'Keep survivors quiet'

Kate Grover -- a women's and gender studies professor at Washington and Lee University, who has researched intersections of gender and the music industry -- said the notion of "geniuses" is also particularly pronounced in music.

"Once we have labeled someone as a genius," she said, "it kind of creates a scarcity model," where they're seen as too big to fail.

Rocker Marilyn Manson -- whose real name is Brian Warner -- was 37 when he began dating 18-year-old Evan Rachel Wood © SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP/File

But women "are seen as much more disposable within the music industry than men," she added.

Many experts including Grover and Heldman say race is a clear factor when considering which cases are taken seriously by the wider public. Celebrity also plays a major role.

The victims in Kelly's lawsuits were young Black girls and women who "did not have the kind of star power that a lot of the actresses who came forward against Harvey Weinstein did," Grover said.

And pop's top musicians are frequently empires in their own right, said Heldman, "who employ a people who help them in their years of perpetration."

Since the initial lawsuit against Combs by his longtime partner Cassie Ventura, many similar lawsuits have followed. He is imprisoned on federal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, awaiting trial.

The volume of the class action suit against him that followed this week "really speaks to the power of certain people in the music industry to marshal their fame and their resources to keep survivors quiet," said Heldman.

'Systemic issues'

A burst of litigation against other powerful men in music, from artists to CEOs, also followed Ventura's suit.

The myriad allegations underscored "the gravity of the situation" wrote singer-songwriter and activist Tiffany Red, who has worked with Ventura, in an open letter to Combs last December.

"The systemic issues of rape culture and misogyny deeply entrenched in the music industry pose a real threat to so many people's safety every day in this business," Red wrote.

"How can we expect meaningful change when senior leadership and superstars face accusations of these crimes?"

Country music star Garth Brooks is one of the most successful male artists of all time © Valerie MACON / AFP/File

Heldman also pointed to "perverse market incentives:" Kelly's sales jumped more than 500 percent after his racketeering conviction, with streams jumping 22 percent over the week that followed.

Similiarly Diddy's music saw an average 18.3 percent increase in on-demand streams the week of his arrest compared to that prior, according to industry data company Luminate.

Some of that might be curiosity after a name is in the news, but Heldman also pointed to the intense fandoms musicians enjoy.

"In years of doing this work with survivors in different industries, I've never seen anything like the fan dedication to musical artists," she said

Still, Heldman said, "it feels like we are on the crest of something."

"I would anticipate any rapist artist who has been operating with the idea that he can silence survivors now knows that the jig is up."